Louisa Saunders
- Experience
Louisa is a Legal Director, commercial property lawyer. With a background of many years working on a wide variety of commercial property matters, Louisa is a member of our Charities Team, specialising in advising charities and other not-for-profit organisations (including those in the public sector) in their dealings with land and property.
Louisa’s practice includes:
- Buying and selling charity land and property for investment or occupational purposes.
- Compliance with charity law and good decision making practice.
- Strategic development.
- Selling charity land for development, including overage, options and promotion agreements.
- Charity retail portfolio management.
- Landlord and tenant issues.
- Gifts/legacies of land and property to charities.
- Advising on permanent endowment and designated land, including in the context of charity incorporations and mergers.
- Questions of land ownership, charitable trusts, trusts of land, reconstruction of title and first registrations at Land Registry.
Louisa is a member of the Charities’ Property Association, the Charity Law Association and speaks on charity property at sector events, including at Birketts events. Louisa also regularly writes articles on topical issues, including for the firm’s newsletters Room With a View, aimed at property professionals, and Essential Trustee – aimed at charity trustees and senior managers.
Louisa read law at University College London and trained with an international law firm, qualifying as a solicitor in 2003. She then took a ‘grown up gap year’, qualifying as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and working in a children’s home in South India, teaching English. Louisa joined Birketts in 2005. Louisa is vice-chair of governors at a local primary school.
Louisa read law at University College London and trained with an international law firm, qualifying as a solicitor in 2003. She then took a ‘grown up gap year’, qualifying as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and working in a children’s home in South India, teaching English. Louisa joined Birketts in 2005.
Louisa is vice-chair of governors at a local primary school.
The firm is able to combine expertise in areas such as property law with specific charity law expertise, identifying the added complexities this may bring. All at rates lower than London firms, making it an obvious go-to choice for charities.
Legal 500 [UK 2021]
